


On Being Empty

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Series: (C)PTSD Files [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, CPTSD, Dean Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dean is Bad at Feelings, Dean is In Over His Head, Dean is Really Fucked Up In This, Episode Related, Episode: s13e03 Patience, Family, Family Drama, Flashbacks, Gen, Not Exactly a Tag So, POV Dean Winchester, Post-Episode: s13e04 The Big Empty, Stand Alone, Stream of Consciousness, This Needed to Stand Alone, for a reason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 20:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12615220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Sam, Dean, Jack and Cas all faced big things. Some of them are doing better than others. (Summary Written While Sleepless)





	On Being Empty

**Author's Note:**

> \- I never sleep after I watch an episode the night it airs. I know this and yet I do this to myself and it's bad. So I didn't sleep before writing this. Couldn't.  
> \- I love this episode, sorry, not sorry AT ALL.  
> \- It's really gen.  
> \- I have so many feelings about all this.  
> \- I have a series of ficlets (all in one fic) where Dean faces his CPTSD, this is not in that series because it needed to stand alone. But you can check out the other ones written since 13.01 in my fic "On Any Given Day." (13.01 FUCKED ME UP and I had to write so much CPTSD stuff omg.)  
> \- CPTSD is not PTSD, what Dean has is CPTSD because the trauma began so early in his life and was so consistently not fixed. So I'm labeling most of my fics re: Dean's PTSD with CPTSD.  
> \- So yeah this is another CPTSD fic. No room for anything else.  
> \- I. Love. This. Episode. (13.04) And I'm mostly burned out on the canon so that's saying a lot.  
> \- Also covers some events in 13.03  
> \- I suck at writing Castiel so you get a little but not a lot.

There’s something about having to attend a grief counselor with your brother--and your “brother”--that can bring everything to the surface.

It does for Sam when suddenly he’s screaming, really screaming, at Dean, in Dean’s face, and Dean’s feelings are so, so far away because that’s the way he’s going to get through this.

And okay. Then he does, he feels bad, and it’s real, and especially when Mia is throwing it back in his face like he did it on purpose, which maybe he did. He knows, but he doesn’t know. He knows. Doesn’t know. Doesn’t know if he--cares. He should care. He does care. It’s Sam.

Of course he does. He’s hard-wired to care--for Sam, about Sam, with Sam.

With Sam.

The thing is, Sam doesn’t know everything.

College Boy, that’s what Dean called him once, and sometimes Sam does think that way, that he knows so many things Dean doesn’t know, but the thing is, here, Sam was there but he wasn’t there, not in a way where he could make memories of seeing Mom die, not in a way where when it happens again he walks around in a flashback for a week without saying anything--what would anyone say?

_Yeah, Sam, sorry, I’m broken._

Words aren’t Dean’s thing, won’t ever be, and he hasn’t had language for this, and he doesn’t now, but he knows what he saw, he knows he relived the fire when he saw her disappear again and it’s why he can’t feel anything now, why he’s certain now, why he _believes nothing now_ , because what’s left?

That he’s sorry, that’s something that’s left, because he’s been sorry forever and he always will be, _get in line_ , _fall in step_ , because he’s sorry, because it will be that way forever.

Because Sam had a tiny chance at normal and tried to take it and didn’t get it, and it’s taken a long time for Dean to realize what Sam lost then, and that’s why he says what he says to Patience, too. He’d say it again. He’d tell her every day.

Take your chances at normal-- _take them_ \--fight for them.

Fight for them.

This life...is sitting with your brother at grief counseling and realizing he blames you. That his shine, his optimism, is burning out, right when you need it most. Knowing it all week, the whole time the case is actively on your brains. Knowing that he’s been stressed by this babysitting gig while you’ve been yelling at him about the babysitting gig.

Knowing that you can’t fix everything, or even close to as many of the things as you need to fix. Knowing that it’s hopeless.

And knowing that everyone--everything--is gone.

And reaching out again to one of the only people who has ever understood even half of what it was or is like.

And the I’m sorry that rips out of you, one hanging in the air to represent the hundreds of thousands you have said in your head--to Sam, about Sam, with Sam, without him knowing.

This life is hell, and all the angels that were in it have long since disappeared.

They’ve died.

Some have deserved it.

And some--

Well.

They’ve died.

*~*~*

In a blooming field, Castiel lies against the ground, knowing from the feeling of clothes on his body that he is solid and he is wearing his coat, exactly like he is on earth.

He is on earth.

He has won another battle.

And he can go home.


End file.
